Angelenos incarcerated: the LA County Jail Oral History Project.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20247110

The LA County Jail Oral History Project aims to document the conditions, culture, and recent history of the LA County jail system through the oral histories of former and current inmates. The oral history project and its public website create an opportunity to grant an authoritative voice to the literally disenfranchised minority of the former and current local inmate population in Los Angeles County. Five initial oral histories have been gathered from those who were incarcerated in one of the LA County jails from the 1980s to present day. The projects prototype website (http://angelenosincarcerated.org/) serves as a digital space to test the intersections of diverse media forms in the relation of these narratives. The site is composed of a project video, two exhibits with accompanying video and audio files, and an interactive mapping feature. The principal analytical components of the thesis are its customized TEI schema and five encoded oral histories. The primary inquiry driving the encoding process is the marking of recurrent trauma and identity formation as it is impacted and reformed by the experience of incarceration.